


The word that breaks the pause

by Deastar



Category: X-Men: First Class (2011) - Fandom
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-09-12
Updated: 2011-09-12
Packaged: 2017-10-23 16:17:28
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,938
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/252341
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Deastar/pseuds/Deastar
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>A summons to the mansion, or an order, Erik could have--would have--ignored. But something in the last six terrible months has taught Charles how to say “please.”</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	The word that breaks the pause

**Author's Note:**

> Above-and-beyond beta, as always, provided by laulan.

She is no one – a face that he will not remember in five minutes’ time. But when the non-descript woman he passes on the street murmurs, “Erik,” he stops in his tracks, turns, stares. “Erik,” the woman says again – _no_ , Erik thinks _, better to say, ‘Charles says again, through her.’_

“Tonight,” she tells him, eyes solemn – Erik does not like taking orders, is about to walk away, when the woman’s eyes close, and her shoulders buckle inward, and she whispers, “Please.”

An order, Erik could have—would have—ignored. He nods tightly and turns on his heel, planning his route to Westchester.

 

~*~

 

Security at the mansion is laughably bad. That is what Erik chooses to believe, despite knowing that Charles is not stupid, and also that he would not recklessly risk the lives of his students.

He slips through dark hallways, dodging bars of moonlight, and turns the tumblers of the lock on the bedroom door. Inside, Charles is sitting up against the headboard, waiting for him.

“Erik,” he says softly – Erik has never known him to have any shame about stating the obvious. “You’ve come.”

Erik walks toward the bed, letting his eyes roam over Charles’s face, newly lined, and Charles’s body. If Erik had not already heard, from many sources—had not heard Mystique’s sobs drifting through her closed door every night for weeks—he would not have noticed the unnatural stillness of Charles’s legs beneath the covers. The chair is tucked up against the wall, shadowed by the wardrobe, but if Charles had wanted to hide it, there are five places in this room alone that would have better kept it from Erik’s sight.

“Take that ridiculous thing off.” Charles looks irritated, narrowing his eyes at Erik’s head. “It makes you look like a pastry bag tip.”

Entirely against his will, Erik finds a corner of his mouth tilting upward. When Charles sees it, the irritation is gently washed from his face, and he returns Erik’s stunted twig of smile with a hesitant smile of his own. Quiet but sure, he says, “If you thought that I would harm you, or invade your mind, you would not have come in the first place.”

That is not purely true, but Erik removes the helmet nonetheless, and Charles rewards him with another smile, still wavering and wary, ready to flee at a moment’s notice. Erik places the helmet at the foot of the bed, and waits, silent, to see what Charles wants from him.

Erik has developed quite a talent for patience – all stalking predators must – but he is not at ease in this place, surrounded by an army-in-training of people who must think of him as their enemy. In truth, he was never easy here, in these privileged, polished walls; he tolerated it because it was safe, and because Charles was here, and did not show it off or expect Erik to be impressed by it.

“Why am I here?” Erik asks, finally.

Charles does not hurry to answer. His eyes do not stray from Erik’s face, but they drift out of focus and into memory.

Drawing a deliberate breath, he says, “I remember, when we first met, all you could think was how _young_ I was. As if every time you looked at me, you were surprised by it all over again. Nobody thinks that about me anymore. A man in a wheelchair is always old. I _feel_ old.”

Erik stays silent. He does not think that Charles would appreciate hearing the truth – that he is right, that Erik cannot look at the new lines of pain carved into his face and still dismiss him as a child.

“No platitudes of reassurance,” Charles says, tilting his head, eyes close and warm on Erik’s face. “Thank you. For that.”

“Did you expect anything else?” Erik asks. He is honestly curious – does Charles believe him changed so much? – but it makes Charles laugh, a true laugh that tips his head back and shudders through his chest.

At the motion, Charles winces, and his arm twists around, bringing a hand to the base of his spine.

Erik’s eyes narrow, and he tries to keep his confusion hidden, but his mind is racing – from what he knows, paralysis is accompanied by a lack of all feeling, including pain, so _why_ —

Erik’s bewilderment grows when Charles inexplicably begins unbuttoning his shirt, then pulls it carefully off, tugging at the fabric gathered around his wrists. He looks up, catches Erik’s expression, and half-smiles. “I could see you were curious. You might as well come and have a look.”

Erik has no particular interest in Charles’s scar. He has two gunshot scars himself, and they are no more beautiful or hideous or difficult to explain away than his twoscore other scars.

But Charles is twisting away from him, and the line of his shoulders is clean in the moonlight, and there is a shadow dripping all the way down from the exposed nape of his neck to the darkness gathered around the base of his spine. Erik finds himself taking a step forward again, and then another. When he is standing by Charles’s side, Charles flicks on the bedside lamp, and a soft golden light wipes away those shadows, leaving the skin of his lower back clear to see.

Erik knows the scars of torture when he sees them.

“The bullet came out clean,” Erik says harshly, breathing through his teeth. “It came out clean, I saw—” _I made sure of it._

The lines—every shade of death-white and blood-pink—criss-cross like yarn twisted between the fingers of young girls; like a sadist’s game of _Fadenspiel_.

“Oh, no – these scars are not from the wound itself,” Charles says, and now that Erik looks closer, he can tell that many of them are recent, still raw.

When it becomes apparent that Charles is not going to elucidate without prompting, Erik bites, “Then what—”

“Dear Hank’s attempts to—“ Charles’s mouth twists. “—fix me.” He draws in a breath, and smoothes down the blankets over his lifeless legs. Attempting a smile, he continues, “I have had to be quite stern with him, after the last time – no more than one attempt every six months. As much as I admire his… zeal, I cannot be laid up in bed every day. Running a school is a surprisingly active pursuit.”

“You do not believe that he will succeed.”

“No. But please do not tell him that. It would break his heart.”

Erik sits on the bed. He does not mean it as any kind of invitation, but Charles lets out a small sigh and leans forward until his forehead rests on Erik’s shoulder. No word or motion breaks the tableau. Erik’s eyes drift – he takes the opportunity, unobserved, to observe.

There is new muscle in Charles’s torso, and in his arms. _A different kind of adaptation_ , Erik thinks _, than the kind that created us._ On long trips across the country, searching out their own kind, Charles had tried to teach Erik about Mendelian inheritance and adenine-thymine bonds; but in this type of adaptation, Charles is the green student and Erik the master. Erik could write Charles a thesis on the parts of a man that he can learn to live without, if he must. It is not a lesson he ever wanted to teach. It is not a lesson he ever wanted Charles to learn.

Erik is pulled from his thoughts by a small sound, thin and choked. His focus sharpens and he hears it again, and sees Charles’s chest tremble, like the flicker of an old gas lamp. As Erik watches, the tremors spread to Charles’s shoulders, growing stronger until he can feel Charles shaking where his head rests on Erik’s own shoulder. The sounds, too, grow – louder and more hollow, as if there is nothing left within Charles but these ugly, wracking sobs and the dead, empty spaces between his bones where they echo.

Cursing through his tears, Charles pulls away from Erik, burying his mouth against the skin of his wrist as if that will muffle the sounds, turning his face away from Erik’s gaze as if that will hide the tears streaking down his cheeks. It makes Erik angry, for reasons he does not intend to examine, and he forces his hands to be slow and deliberate as he opens his arms and draws Charles close.

Charles does not try to fight him – he melts against Erik’s body as if he has been waiting for Erik’s touch, and he clutches at Erik like a shipwrecked man finally crawling ashore. His fingers are digging into the hollows behind Erik’s shoulder blades with desperate strength, and Erik cannot shake the feeling that, if they could, Charles’s fingers would punch right through Erik’s shirt and Erik’s skin, and take hold of his bones. His face is wet and flushed-hot in the crook of Erik’s neck, and the tears feel like blood as they trace the paths of Erik’s veins and dampen the collar of his shirt.

There is nothing genteel or restrained about this moment, this sudden glimpse of the planet’s most powerful mutant, half-naked in a small, rumpled corner of his opulent bed, weeping like his ribs might crack and his heart might drown. Only bare, pathetic fragments of words make it out alive between sobs, but each one is a bone needle that pierces Erik, skin and muscle, until it strikes his heart.

 _I can’t._

 _Erik._

 _It hurts._

 _I’m not._

 _It’s too much._

 _I need._

 _Too much, too much._

 _Ah_ , Erik thinks, understanding now – the chair left in plain view, the scars exposed to his sight, Charles’s naked pain now painted on Erik’s skin by ragged breaths and blood-warm trickling tears. Of course it is no accident. _This is my punishment_ , Erik realizes, at last understanding why Charles called him here, and he bows his head and holds Charles more gently and does not say a word.

Charles’s head comes up, and when Erik looks back up to meet his gaze, Charles’s eyes are blurred with tears and confusion. “Punishment?”

Erik has the helmet halfway across the bed when Charles’s eyes sharpen, and he says, “Erik, _no_ —you were practically shouting, I couldn’t—” Slowly, he pulls back from Erik, wiping his eyes. “This isn’t—I didn’t call you here to punish you, Erik.”

 _Then why_? Erik thinks, frustrated, and he must be shouting again, because Charles takes in a sharp, uneven breath, and when it shudders out again, it carries a whisper.

“There is no one else.”

Erik doesn’t understand.

Not meeting his eyes, Charles tries to explain, “There is no one else who can—with whom I can—”

“Your students love you.” Erik has never met any of the new ones, but he is certain of this all the same, and Charles does not disagree.

“Yes,” he replies, mouth twisting. “Love. Respect, admire—worship, I think, sometimes. I hear it constantly, like water running over everything, every day—heroic, stoic, noble Professor X, bearing up with so much strength, so much _serenity_ ,” and he flinches from the word as if it were a bruise, his mutilated spine curled down and inward like a dog’s.

He calms, looks at Erik with unforgiving affection. “But you never thought that of me. You never harbored any delusions of my nobility, my friend,” and he looses that word upon Erik so casually, without any trace of irony or the weight of history, that Erik barely hears him continue. “Naïveté, yes – and arrogance. Blindness. Cowardice, even.”

 _My friend_ , Erik thinks. He is flayed – Charles may as well have rifled through his mind with open careless hands, so undone is Erik by those two words. _My friend_ , sincere and unbitter, after everything.

“You’re wrong,” Erik says, and he captures Charles’s hand in his own. His memories are honest – they have no choice – and they do not hide Erik’s resentment of Charles’s unthinking privilege, Erik’s frustration with his baseless, dangerous optimism. But neither do they hide the wistful yearning that had begun to wind tender, spring-green tendrils around Erik’s heart at the thought of the world Charles was building here – a world that Charles had opened to Erik as if he were not a butcher and a weapon never meant to outlive its last use. Charles had seen something more in Erik. Charles had seen everything in Erik, and never flinched. His compassion is still the one warm thing that Erik’s cynicism cannot explain away.

Erik shouts as loudly as he can, his lips pressed tightly together. Whatever Charles hears, or sees, it makes him cry out – he looks up at Erik, wide-eyed. For a moment, they lock gazes, and Erik watches Charles pull his familiar control back on before glancing away, putting on a borrowed half-smile that doesn’t quite fit.

“I can’t get anything that I want from you, can I?” Charles asks. “Not even your hatred. Or your contempt.”

Disconcerted, Erik says, “Charles…” but does not know how to go on.

“Professor X, now,” Charles corrects him, lips twisting. “Not even a person. Not allowed to be human; to have human fears, frustrations—desires. Just a statue of a fallen hero, a faceless, sexless paragon. Just a title and a letter of the alphabet.”

With anyone else, Erik would tell him how little sympathy a man who was once a number will ever have for a man who complains of being no more than a title. But Charles does not deserve that tonight.

Instead, he says, “You can have those things with me.”

“I know. Why do you think I called you here?”

“You can have fears,” Erik continues, because if he stops now, that will be the end of it. “Frustrations.” Charles’s hand is still warm between Erik’s own, and he clearly expects nothing more from Erik than the paltry half-kindness he has already received, and he is so very, very beautiful. Erik’s voice is rough and low when he rasps out the final word: “Desires.”

 _Very_ beautiful, and Erik has thought so since that first moment, both their faces lit by searchlights reflecting off of the choppy surface of the sea like a broken mirror. All that time, Erik had never dared to touch. So perhaps _he_ , Erik, is the coward: for now, when there is nothing to lose, he closes his hands even more tightly around Charles’s, and kisses his cherry-bright lips.

Charles recoils immediately, eyes wide, and rips his hand away.

“I know you think me cruel for calling you here, but _this_ —” His voice shakes, and his eyes are wounded and white-hot with fury. “— _this_ is a kind of cruelty I would not have suspected you of—”

“Charles, no,” Erik scrapes out, breaking through the torrent of angry words and plastering his hand to the side of Charles’s face, which is fever-hot.

After so many months spent painstakingly hiding his fantasies from Charles, locking them away every time Charles slipped inside his mind, it makes Erik feel excruciatingly naked to expose them this way, but he grits his teeth and allows them to flood the forefront of his mind.

The sexual fantasies are not particularly embarrassing; Erik is sure that Charles has seen his own soft hands, his own parted lips, in enough depraved scenarios in enough strangers’ minds that nothing in Erik’s imaginings will shock him.

The others, Erik would hold back if his control were fine enough. They make him burn with sour shame and bitter regret as they flash across his mind: the humiliating domestic scenes, dreamed up before Erik knew the sort of privilege Charles had grown up in, and how unlikely he was to know one end of a dustmop from the other; the wistful images of some hazy kind of future after Shaw’s death, a prospect Erik had never even contemplated before Charles had found him in the water; the embarrassingly adolescent fantasies of courtship, of Erik daring to make some small overture and Charles accepting Erik’s awkward attempts at romance with a blush and a pleased smile, touched rather than scornful at Erik’s stilted gestures.

Something in Erik’s jumbled, stained collection of fantasies must be enough for Charles – he gasps, and his eyes are startled-wide when they meet Erik’s gaze.

“Erik…” he whispers, and then seems to run out of words.

“I know I am not the partner you would choose.” Erik’s voice is gravel-rough and low. “But my desire for you is sincere.”

“You do _not_ know,” Charles disagrees fiercely, and he reaches out with sure, unshaking hands to draw Erik closer, close enough to catch his lips in a hungry kiss. “You do not know how long I have wanted—” he whispers into Erik’s mouth, but Erik smothers the rest of the sentence with another kiss. If Charles wants to buy himself more regrets, that is his choice; Erik does not waste thought on things he could have had in the past. He did not have them then; now he does, alive and warm under his hands. That is enough.

The silk of Charles’s skin and the new muscle quivering beneath it make Erik’s blood sing. Charles is past eager, frantic and desperate – he pushes at Erik’s shirt with quick, frustrated motions, but he can’t tear himself away from Erik’s mouth long enough to pull the damn thing off. Whether by unconscious telepathic bleed or simple animal response, Erik is catching Charles’s fever, and even though the buttons are metal, it takes him three tries to undo them and throw the shirt past the foot of the bed.

He wants more of Charles’s bare skin, _needs_ it, and he crawls onto the bed and settles onto Charles’s unmoving legs, leaning forward until they are fully skin-on-skin and Charles lets out a shocked moan.

“Erik,” he begs, eyes fever-bright and mouth bruise-red, “touch me, oh please, touch me…”

Erik drags one thumb down Charles’s chest until he finds a dark pink nipple, already peaked and flushed with blood. He rubs across it, curious, and Charles writhes against him, whimpering and biting his lip. A flick of his fingernail produces an even more powerful response – Charles’s hands spasm against Erik’s back, and he lets out a shivering, full-throated moan of “Please, Erik, m-more…”

Erik complies. His lips are buzzing but he refuses to pull away from Charles’s mouth, devouring the groans and shouts he’s pulling from Charles’s throat with his fingers, rubbing and twisting at Charles’s nipples.

Ever the professor, in the gasps between kisses, Charles tries to explain, “With the – mmm – the loss of sensation in—in other areas, Erik, _Erik_ – there’s a corresponding—a corresponding— _ah_ —increased sensitivity in the area that remains – I need, I need—Erik, I need _more—_ ”

Erik is only listening with half an ear, but _loss of sensation_ penetrates the haze, and _more_ – he could try to intuit on his own what _more_ means for Charles now, but Erik is not the telepath here.

Pulling back, Erik meets Charles’s eyes and asks “Can you still—?”

“Yes,” Charles says quickly. “It’s not—not the same, but I am still… physically capable.”

Erik just nods – he would have given Charles whatever he needed, whatever the answer had been – and reaches for Charles’s groin, but Charles says, “No,” grabs his hand, pulls it back up to his temple. “Like—like this. That is, I would prefer… if you’re willing.”

Erik can feel an answering hardness against his own erection, but he nods his assent without question or argument. He sees no point in second-guessing Charles about the desires and responses of the telepath’s own body.

Charles brings his hand up to Erik’s temple and rests his fingertips lightly on the skin. Erik can feel the touch of Charles’s mind, equally light, brushing against the outer walls of his mind – he can feel Charles bleeding through, desperation and affection and bruised hope. After so many months without a telepath’s touch, it is strange again.

On his face or in his mind, Charles reads the thought, and he bites his lip. His voice says, “You needn’t—if you’ve changed your mind, of course that is—”

But against his skin, Erik catches the silken brush of the word _please_.

“Is it better this way now? For you?”

“I…I wouldn’t know,” Charles says with a smile that doesn’t reach his eyes. “I haven’t—tried. With anyone else.”

Erik shoves down the snarling animal in his gut that howls its possessive satisfaction – the untouched loneliness lying soft in the shadows under Charles’s eyes deserves better from him.

“It _will_ be better,” Erik says. He instructs himself that it will be true. He will make it true.

Charles looks as if he wants to argue, so Erik takes his mouth again, opening his lips and tangling with his tongue. _Now, Charles_ , he sends – Charles’s fingertips settle on Erik’s temple, and Erik has a moment to feel that familiar touch upon his mind before Charles takes a deep breath and pushes inside.

Since escaping Shaw, Erik has let a dozen men open him up and use his body. This is a thousand times more.

Charles is gentle – even at his most ruthless, he is always gentle – but it hurts. He slides past Erik’s barriers, pushing through the layers of his mind, into parts of Erik that have never been opened to anyone’s touch before, not even Erik’s own. Inexorable, Charles drives toward Erik’s core, but they are so tightly wrapped around each other now that Erik’s attempts to conceal the pain are futile.

Stricken, Charles starts to pull back. _Forgive me—_

Erik almost growls with frustration, wants to push Charles, wants to remind him how little there is left in Erik to break. But this close together, this deep within each other, Erik’s pain will be Charles’s pain, and that, Erik will not permit.

 _Charles!_ he calls, catching Charles at the edge of his mind, preparing to sever their connection. _No. Don’t stop._

 _This should not be a punishment, Erik—_

 _And it will not be. Just… slow, Charles._

 _Slow_ , Charles repeats, nodding. There is still apology hovering at the edges of his touch, but he reaches up a hand to draw Erik’s face down to his. Not for a kiss – they merely rest against each other’s skin, foreheads touching, breathing each other’s breath as Charles slides inside of Erik’s mind once again.

As they breathe in tandem, Erik matches Charles’s slow push, lowering his walls as Charles fills his mind, coming closer and close to Erik’s core. When the last barrier falls, Erik gasps, because

 _—his hand splays wide across Charles’s skin is humming with hunger deep in the pit of Erik’s stomach like a flame blazing red as Charles’s lips tracing the lines of Erik’s bones like embers under his flesh—_

Together, they ride out the first crashing wave of reflected sensation – Erik can feel the wonder and surprise from Charles’s mind, can’t hold back his own awe at the power binding them together.

 _Is it always like this?_

 _No_ , Charles replies, _never._

Erik’s mind is awash with pure animal pleasure, whispered snatches of fantasies, and the constant murmuring of Charles’s thoughts, filthy and broken and sweet as dark honey. He is aware of his own body, devouring Charles’s skin with his hands and thrusting mindlessly against Charles’s stomach. Charles feels Erik’s fingers like brands across his ribs, and Erik feels the heat as if it were his own; Charles’s mouth yields under Erik’s like ripe fruit, and Erik feels his own lips bruise. He catches glimpses of himself through Charles’s eyes, and feels Charles’s confused delight at the way his breathy gasps stoke Erik’s arousal and build the fierce tugging in Erik’s gut.

 _Never_ , Charles repeats, his incredible mind reduced to pleasure-shocked shards of conscious thought, _never like this – never felt—never. Erik… you. You. Need you._

Too destroyed to reply, Erik just shuts his eyes, lets go of the last boundaries of his separate self, and when they both fall and fall and fall, there are no words, no histories or philosophies or names, just the white heat that immolates them both until they shiver apart into silver ash.

 

~*~

 

It is excruciating, the careful detaching of Charles’s mind from his own, but also a relief. Even the pain is welcome – it clears Erik’s head of the warm, drugging remnants of their intimacy. Erik is not usually prone to afterglow; he feels more himself once it is gone.

When Erik is finally, completely and only himself again, his body wants nothing more than for him to lean into the heat of Charles’s pink-flushed skin and drink in the simple animal comfort of closeness.

Instead, he quickly stands and strips off his sticky underwear, and pulls his trousers back on. Then he returns to the side of the bed, offering Charles a handkerchief – after Charles takes it and begins to fumble with the waistband of his pajamas, Erik locates his shirt, and the helmet, which had rolled off the foot of the bed while his mind was elsewhere. When he picks up the shirt, he feels a wordless flare of emotion from Charles, swiftly smothered but unmistakable. He lifts an eyebrow at Charles – Charles looks away and bites his lip. The moonlight is gone, and the brass lamp by the side of the bed is now the only source of light in the room; it throws long shadows over the rumpled sheets and casts half of Charles’s face into darkness.

“Forgive me,” Charles murmurs. “I have no right.”

Erik frowns, repeating, “No right…”

“To ask more of you,” Charles continues apologetically, “after what you have already—”

“But you will,” Erik says, irony laced through with something almost like fondness.

Charles dips his head in acknowledgment, then hesitates. “If I were to ask you… to—to stay.” Then, more softly, barely audible, “Please.”

For a moment, Erik is frozen, speechless. The sheer _arrogance_ —but even more, that Charles could touch the inmost parts of Erik’s mind, could possess Erik’s thoughts and memories and convictions so thoroughly, and still not _know_ him at all—

“Is that really what you think?” Erik doesn’t bother to hide the venom in his voice, the contempt and anger that Charles so badly wanted from him – he’s fucking well earned it now. “That Prince Charming’s kiss will redeem me – turn the Big Bad Wolf into a friendly sheepdog, playing fetch with the children on the lawn and curling up at your feet every night? That one good fuck is all it would take to wipe away the differences between us, to _change_ me—”

“ _No_ ,” Charles rasps, eyes bright with desperation, and then, more calmly, “No, Erik.” His hands lie open on his lap, and he looks down at them as if the answers are slipping through the empty spaces between his fingers. “No,” he says, very quiet again. “That is… there will always be a place for you here, if you want it. But that is not what—I only meant—tonight. Would you stay—with me. Tonight.”

Erik sinks down onto the bed, and buries his face in the shirt still balled up in his hands, stomach twisting. He wants, selfishly, to be angry with Charles—for expecting so little from him, for making it so easy for Erik to misunderstand—but his anger twists inward, devouring itself like an animal gnawing on its own leg. He feels a light touch on his bare shoulder, and then Charles is gently tugging the shirt away, blue eyes gentle when they meet Erik’s. Erik can see on his face that this, too, is forgiven. “Will you?” Charles asks, tilting his head. If it were anyone but Charles, Erik would be amazed that he would still _want_ Erik to stay, after that burst of undeserved viciousness, but this is Charles’s gift: just as remarkable, in its own way, as his telepathy, and just as capable of stripping Erik to the bone.

With a raised hand, Erik draws the curtains closed by their metal rings and flicks off the bedside lamp. Under cover of the perfect darkness, Erik whispers, “Yes,” and ghosts a kiss across Charles’s lips – as much of an apology as he is capable of.

Charles says he would prefer not to lie down, so Erik helps him to lean forward, and slips between Charles’s back and the headboard, then draws Charles back against him until he can feel the vicious ladder of Charles’s surgical scars against his belly. Charles is not a short man, particularly, but it is easy for him to tuck his head under Erik’s chin.

“I’ll be gone in the morning before any of the children could see me,” Erik promises quietly, as Charles captures one of his hands and weaves their fingers together—Charles’s grip tightens for a split-second.

“Will you—will you wake me before you leave?”

“Of course,” Erik replies, bending to drop a kiss on the curve of Charles’s shoulder.

 _Promise me,_ Charles demands. His mental voice is blurred with gathering sleep, like a watercolor sketch of itself. Erik can feel Charles’s exhaustion bleeding into his mind, flowing along old pathways established many months ago and renewed tonight – pathways that will probably never fully fade away. Erik thinks, _I promise_ , and lets Charles drag him down into sleep.

 

~*~

 

Erik wakes up instantly, as always, to find Charles still warm and quiet in his arms.

Charles has contorted himself around in his sleep a bit and his face is mashed into the underside of Erik’s jaw. As Erik stares at the purple-gray light starting to seep in around the edges of the curtains, Charles makes a sweet, unconscious little noise and nuzzles into Erik’s neck.

Erik is seized by a powerful surge of want – not sexual. He can imagine it – waking up every morning to Charles warm and heavy in their shared bed, the sun coming up over the grounds, the house full of young mutants getting ready for the business of learning themselves and each other and the shape of the world.

“A good thought,” Charles mumbles, eyes still closed.

“Is it mine?”

Charles sighs, and his eyelids slowly flutter open. “I didn’t plant it, if that’s what you’re asking. But I _was_ having some extraordinarily good dreams.”

“Do you usually project your state of mind to other dreamers while you sleep?” Erik asks – he thinks he would have noticed, but of course, that is what makes Charles’s power so terrifying.

Charles yawns widely and indelicately, then makes a face. “Oh, good lord, no. And thank heavens for that, or the whole school would wake up screaming.”

Erik does not ask Charles what his nightmares are about. There’s no need.

The reminder of the mansion’s other inhabitants shakes Erik free of the last fog of sleep.

“I should go, before the children are up,” he says, sliding out of the pocket of warmth created between Charles’s body and the pillow against the headboard. The morning air is cool enough to make him shiver as he slides his feet into his shoes, and pulls his shirt on, guiding the metal buttons through the buttonholes faster than his fingers could manage.

“You could stay just a bit longer, you know,” Charles offers, watching him. “Meet the new students, at least.”

It’s a smart play. One of the few things Charles and Erik still have in common is their shared delight and awe at the fantastic range of mutations surfacing in the world; at nature’s reckless and beautiful ingenuity pushing back against mere humanity’s unrelenting pressure to conform. Erik cannot deny that he is hungry to see what new mutations Charles has discovered. He could easily justify it as a tactical decision, as well – after all, these students will someday be Charles’s foot soldiers, although he would be appalled to hear them described that way.

 _Yes_ , Erik thinks, _it would be very easy to justify._

“I could stay to meet the new students,” Erik allows. “And then, why not stay for breakfast? And after breakfast, a morning run, like old times—”

“—and after that, a game of chess, I hope,” Charles replies with a half-smile, eyes clear. “Perhaps. Would that be so terrible?”

Erik walks over to the windows without replying, and pulls back the curtain far enough to let the pale morning light pour into the bedroom. Outside, the grass is brushed silver with an early frost, and the stone walkways and railings are tinted violet by the sky. Farther out, straight past the lawns and the rows of trees in the distance, Erik can see the satellite dish; if he looks down, he will see the place where he had asked Charles to fire a bullet into his head, and instead, Charles had taught him that his power could come from a place untainted by the rage and fear that Shaw had planted in his heart. Although Erik’s memory of that day is as sharp as broken glass from beginning to end, what he remembers most strongly took place in the blink of an eye: Charles raising a hand to his own cheek, brushing away a tear. Erik has his own protégés, his own allies, waiting for him in a setting far less palatial than the one he sees out this window. But none of them will ever cry for him. He would not want them to. The work they have before them needs harder hearts.

Turning away from the window, Erik extends his hand, summoning the helmet. Charles blanches, and his mouth falls open for a moment before panicked words come tumbling out.

“Erik, please… it is not me _making_ you want those things, Erik—if you want to stay, it is not my doing, please, you must believe me—”

“It _is_ you,” Erik contradicts – Charles starts to protest again, and Erik silences him with a kiss. “But not in the way you mean,” he finishes, tapping Charles’s temple lightly. When Charles takes Erik’s meaning, he blushes and reaches for Erik’s hand, but Erik steps away; and Charles, of course, cannot follow. Even with two strong legs and a scarless spine, Charles could not follow where Erik must go – it has cost him nothing to offer Charles what little his heart has to give (a lie, immediately Erik knows it for a lie), but it fixes nothing, changes nothing. There will always be a distance between them that even Charles, with his godlike power, cannot cross.

Backing away from the bed is like having a joint slowly pulled out of its socket, but Erik expected that – he’s had time to adjust to the foreign feeling of having something it actually hurts to leave behind.

When Erik pauses at the door, turning the tumblers of the lock, he hears Charles call, “Erik?”

Erik turns and waits silently. Charles’s hair is rumpled, and his cheeks are tantalizingly flushed – in the dawn light streaming through the window, he looks like a beautiful young god from the kind of paintings that line the vaults of the men Erik has hunted.

“If I asked you again…” Charles says, biting his lip, eyes deep blue and steady. “Would you come?”

Erik’s faith has never promised to deliver him from temptation – that is Erik’s own responsibility, and deliberately placing himself in temptation’s path is a dozen dangerous kinds of stupid.

 _If you need me_ , Erik promises, holding Charles’s gaze for a moment before pulling the bedroom door open and stepping through.

 _I do, my friend_ , is the last thing he hears before slipping the helmet over his head and shutting the door behind him.


End file.
